As long as I'm shilling...
Aug. 15th, 2005 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaotic_nippleI also just finished reading Accelerando, by the wonderfully demented Charles Stross. It's probably the best Singularity novel ever written. When writing about a singularity (For non-nerds: "Singularity" = the point in time at which technological change becomes so fast that merely human minds are no longer running the show), the chief problem is making a story about superhuman intelligences comprehensible to readers. Charles manages to do so, in a way that preserves a sense of optimism for the merely human. I won't spoil the plot, save to say that in the end, what saves biological humanity from extinction is not the 'benevolent' manipulations of one of the superhuman AIs, but the dividends from an act of altruism in chapter one. The moral of the story is that even though we carbon-based sophants will some day be superceded by our hyperevolved mind children, our actions still matter. Go and read the free download right now, curse you!
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Date: 2005-08-15 11:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-16 07:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-16 07:52 pm (UTC)